Marginalia #55: Ice, The Vourdalak, Mapambazuko
If you have more sci-fi acumen than I do, you may have heard of this before 2024. I came across it after several recommendations. It’s hard to describe and talk about. Anna Kavan has been called “Kafka’s Sister,” which makes sense (this has repeated occurrences, dreamlike sequences, and a bizarre bureaucracy). Still, given the frequent intense and disturbing sequences, I didn’t register any of his humor, which may be my failing on a first read. It feels a little more like Robert Walser or what I remember of Knut Hamsun (but it’s been too long since I read him).
The main story involves a man and a woman who repeatedly find themselves in domination scenes, with him dominating her. However, there is occasionally another suitor who is frequently of a higher social rank. The world is ending as ice begins crushing the life out of the continents, and there may have been another catastrophic incident as well. At times, specific sequences come out of Romero with groups of mercenaries creating havoc or people looting. There are said to be a few humorous, subtle shots at Vonnegut.
Kavan had a heroin addiction for a good part of her life, and many see this book as a reference to it. That she is continually beaten down by this thing she can’t get rid of (men/ice/societal structures).
It’s brutal and bleak, and it’s hard to say that I “like” this book. I will seek out her other work and likely return to this one again. I have somehow read a whole string of apocalypse books that I didn’t know were apocalypse/dystopias. My younger self, obsessed with dystopian fiction, would be proud. (In Watermelon Sugar, The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes–I might have forgotten a couple.)
This might be my favorite horror film from the past year. The titular monster is performed by a marionette, perhaps a dealbreaker for some viewers. A vourdalak is like a vampire that strikes people it loves and has a strange habit of chewing and sucking on its burial shroud. This movie looks like 1970s Euro-exploitation, maybe Jean Rollin’s Fascination (1979), Leptirica (1973), or any other British folk horror pieces of that era. All that atmosphere is used to tell a dark, gothic fairy tale of a movie.
The Bandcamp description for Mapambazuko by Ale Hop and Titi Bakorta is better than anything I could give. Nyege Nyege Tapes consistently releases some of my yearly favorites. This worldly fusion is made by a Peruvian electronics artist and a Congolese guitarist. The main tracks are dense Afro-Latin party music, while the majority of the remixes offer more atmospheric versions.
